News You Can Use

A People Development and Ministry Resource Newsletter
Vol. 7, No. 12

A service of TEAM’s Centre for Lifelong Learning
Feedback is always welcome: news...@teamworld.org

After annunciation
This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and cold
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child
Madaleine L’Engle, in A Widening Light, Luci Shaw, editor

In this issue . . .
1. Planning for Christmas 2009 yet?
2. A reminder
3. Another reminder
4. A chance to help
5. Being an Aroma of Christ: How to Survive and Thrive While Ministering Cross-Culturally
6. The Finishing Well Handbook
7. Just for fun ..
8. How about your annual PKC checkup?
9. Subscription information

~~~~~~~~~~~

Depending on where in the world you are, this edition of News You Can Use finishes off the old year or begins the new. I (ed.) am doing my final editing Dec 31, on a flight from Brussels to Chicago, so it seems as if I have about seven “extra” hours before the year ends for me. What a bonus!

The change of a calendar often prompts some bi-directional reflection. Where have we been, where are we going, what plan will we implement to accomplish the goals that are set before us? While our lives tend to be full of very important things that need to be done, usually with time constraints, we hope that your plans will include some intentional commitment to “sharpening your tools” for more effective ministry. News You Can Use is intended to provide you with some resources that may help you do so.

I have used a variety of approaches to celebrating Advent; books, pamphlets, candles, children’s activities for our growing family, etc. This year Lois and I were blessed to find a little book that we shared with our (now grown and living far away) sons and their families, to prepare our hearts and minds together to welcome Jesus in a new way. Walter Wangerin, Jr. in Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Christ, Advent, Christmas and the Kingdom (Zondervan, 1999), reverently and thoughtfully “re-imagines the events surrounding the Advent of Christ, offering a rich devotional journey into the heart of the Christmas season. Through rich detail and vivid images, these moving meditations make Christ’s birth both intimate and immediate, allowing us to see Christmas from its original happening to its perennial recurrence in our hearts.” You can order it now and have it in time for next Christmas!

Mission Track Offered at Moody Pastor’s Conference
CrossGlobal Link, in partnership with Moody Bible Institute is offering a track of workshops specifically for missionaries at the Moody Pastor’s Conference in Chicago May 18-21, 2009.
Missionaries get:
 Special discounted conference price
 10 specialty workshops
 20-25 free books

Mission workshop topics include:
 Erwin Lutzer: Presenting Christ Among Other gods
 Crawford Loritts: What the Black Church Thinks about Missions
 Chip Ingram: Mission Preaching that Inspires
 Gene Getz: Leadership Functions and Forms: 14 Supra Cultural Principles
 Samuel Rima: The Dark Side of Leadership
 Wes Wilmer: Fundraising and Donor Generosity
 Scott Kiesel: Managing Your Personal Finances as a Missionary
 Tom White: Survey of World Persecution (Voice of the Martyrs)
Plenary Speakers: John Piper, Henry Blackaby, Michael Easley, Flip Flippen, Chip Ingram, John MacArthur and others
Special Missionary price: $300 (Registration: $120, housing and meals $180 = $300)
(or meals only: @ $90 = $210)
Register at www.CrossGlobalLink.org or www.Moody.edu, and use the promo code: MISSION to get the special discount rate.

North Point Community Church is sponsoring an online live web event for sharing about church planting ideas. Free registration is now available at that site for any church planting missionaries and national church leaders who understand English. The first event is on January 21, 2009, at 3:00 PM Paris time (10:00 PM Hong Kong, 9:00 AM in New York). We hope you will join a number of TEAM people to learn with one another. Terry Dischinger writes
“I … hope that many national leaders (and our missionaries as well) will benefit from these seminars. The central idea of how to connect with un-churched people is so central to our work of church planting. So many of our missionaries are prepared to lead and disciple people who are already in the church, but they feel at a loss at how to get people into the church in the first place.”

Click on the link below to see a little more about how it works.

For the past seven years, this publication has proclaimed, rather optimistically, that it provides “news you can use.” Many of you have graciously provided tips and links to news that YOU use so that we can share it widely among our colleagues. We appreciate your participation, and we continue to need your wisdom and good ideas to make this even more useful. Thanks for keeping us (news...@teamworld.org) on your list of friends. We are also interested in any suggestions you might have to make this more useful (Longer? Shorter? Too many online links? More info about seminars, or books, or classes, or …?)

Thanks for your help.

Steve Edlin recommends a new book, Volume I in the Caring Connection Living Well Series; The Finishing Well Handbook. The inside cover summarizes:
“Foreign missionaries and chaplains face much more difficult retirement issues that the average individual. They not only lose their occupation, but they often lose friends, culture, identity, self-esteem, and too frequently, even their hope of future ministry. Whether you are a missionary or a chaplain who is just starting to consider retirement or deep within the transition process, this book is for you.
“You will learn:
• What is successful retirement especially for a missionary or chaplain?
• How can you know when it is time to retire?
• How can you gracefully leave your calling to retire?
• What should you consider when transitioning back to your sending culture?
• How can you re-enter into effective ministry?
• What helps and tools are available?”

The book is available to TEAM personnel for $6.00 by calling or writing to
The Gospel Publishing House
1445 N Boonville Ave.
Springfield, MO 65802
1-417-863-7717

Karen Pearce, a colleague from the IMB who has worked in Central and Eastern Europe, recently published her book on ministry:
Pearce, K. (2006). Being an Aroma of Christ: How to Survive and Thrive While Ministering Cross-Culturally. Hannibal Books, Garland TX (1-800-747-0738) ISBN 0-929292-31-6
The blurb on the back cover says:
“Missionaries are the perfect put-up-on-a-pedestal Christians – many people nurture this common stereotype.
“Karen Pearce refutes this common misconception by asserting that those who minister cross-culturally often struggle to make friends in their new countries, to parent in unfamiliar settings, to maintain strong marriages while away from home’s anchors, and to keep their prayer lives fresh and vital.
“Pearce, who in her missionary service in central and eastern Europe experiences these and other challenge, writes an authentic volume of life saving helps that will smooth the path for anyone adjusting to ministry in a new country – or for those already there who wonder ‘What do we do now?’
“Throughout, she testifies of God’s constancy and of his desire that his servants, above all, impart Christ’s aroma – his essence – around all they reach.”
The book is available from Hannibal Books, www.hannibalbooks.com.

For those of you who may still be dreaming of a white Christmas, take a look at this file for a Monday morning. If you can’t open the attachment to this email, click on (or cut and paste into your browser) the following link: www.zippyvideos.com/8132765616480206/lundi/

At the beginning of the year, as you plan for your Developmental Review with the Lord (a day of prayer and vision) to begin developing your growth plan for 2009, remember that part of your growth plan process should include assessment of your physical and emotional health. TEAM provides access to an online tool to help. The Medical Office encourages you to go to the PKC Knowledge Coupler and complete the “interview.” You will receive personalized feedback and up-to-date medical guidance based on your medical findings that are coupled with an extensive database of medical literature and research. If you have not done this for over a year, click on the link (it doesn’t hurt a bit!) and follow these steps:
1) Go to: couplers.pkc.com.
2) Enter the User Name: team and the Password: membercare. Click Log On.
3) Once you are logged in, you will be on the Problem-Knowledge Coupler System main screen.
4) To begin, click Wellness and Health Review Coupler in the center of the page.
5) Read the information shown in About this Coupler.
6) Check the I accept PKC’s Terms and Conditions checkbox and click Next.
7) Complete Topics 1, 2, 3, & 4 of the questionnaire under the navigation tab ENTER DATA.
After completing the questionnaire go to the FINISH tab on the navigation bar and click Save and/or email this session. If you want to save a copy for yourself, click Save this session to your computer, then save it as an .xml file on your computer.
9) After saving the session, you will be back on the FINISH tab. Click Email this session.
10) Enter llor...@teamworld.org in the Provider’s email address (required): field.
11) Enter your name in the Your name or other ID (required): field.
12) Enter a note or message if needed in the Personal message (optional): field.
13) Click Send.

January is the month in which many Perspectives on the World Christian Movement courses begin in the U.S. If you’re on home assignment and have never this fifteen-week course, now is an ideal time to do it. The likelihood that you will be refreshed mentally and spiritually, even if you have already been serving as a missionary, is high.

 

These courses are offered all across the US and Canada, and in Australia, India, Indonesia, Korea, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

 

One of the best ways to take the course is to invite a friend or supporter to take it with you, and compare insights along the way. The fifteen lessons are grouped in four categories:

Biblical

#1. The Living God is a Missionary God

#2. The Story of His Glory

#3. Your Kingdom Come

#4. Mandate for the Nations

#5. Unleashing the Gospel

History

#6. The Expansion of the Christian Movement

#7. Eras of Mission History

#8. Pioneers of the World Christian Movement

#9. The Task Remaining

Culture

#10. How Shall They Hear?

#11. Building Bridges of Love

Strategy

#12. Christian Community Development

#13. The Spontaneous Multiplication of Churches

#14. Pioneer Church Planting

#15. World Christian Partnership

 

Just so you know, there is also a one-week intensive offered in January and three-week intensives offered in the summer.

 

You can find out all about it at www.perspectives.org.